


Puzzles to Be Solved

by draculard



Category: The Midwich Cuckoos - John Wyndham
Genre: Alien Sex, Aliens, Dubious Consent, Kind of Sort of Incest, Multi, Rapid Aging, Submissive Zellaby, Teacher-Student Relationship, Telepathy, hivemind - Freeform, mind-sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 12:12:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18828457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: He's taught them many things, but he didn't teach them this.





	Puzzles to Be Solved

He’s taught them many things, but some abilities are wholly their own. The telepathy, first and foremost — but also their strange poise and solemn nature, their deeply analytical minds, the rapid onset of maturity both emotional and physical. 

Even Zellaby finds it hard to remember the Children are still children when they tower over him. The boys’ faces are nearly identical in their harsh lines and soft eyes; each has the same firm jaw, the same sweeping cheekbones, the same sharp noses. Zellaby can tell them apart, but only just, only through years of familiarity. 

The girls, too, seem older than they are. They have the grace of full-grown women; they know how to tilt their heads and dimple at older men, how to flatter and flirt without sacrificing dignity. This, too, Zellaby couldn’t teach them. This, too, they learned on their own.

And there are other things. Some villagers consider them to be adults; some consider them to be monsters; some of them have felt this way since the very beginning, since the Dayout. Only for Zellaby does their alien composure break; when he pulls up to the Grange, they rush out to meet him like the children they are, all poise forgotten. He hears their high, fluting voices tumbling over each other in an erratic fountain of birdsong, the boys finishing each other’s questions, the girls watching him with sparkling, eager eyes.

There’s something about that eagerness which goes quite beyond what he’s experienced with other students. They absorb everything he says on the first hearing, but they’re ever hungry for more. And when he runs out of things to say — when he stands before them, his eyes heavy and his mouth dry from hours of pure classroom monologue — he sees how alert they are, each of them half-smiling, and realizes they’re eager for something else.

A different type of knowledge.

When they were babes in their cribs, he gave them puzzles to solve and marveled at their speed and acuity. Now, he feels like a wooden box divided into interlocking segments, each one moving beneath their fingers with a purpose. A wooden box helpless to initiate, helpless to resist — yet designed for this very purpose by some unseen god.

Their hands slip beneath his shirt, palms cool and dry against his skin. The girls move as one to pull his trousers down; the boys as a whole put their lips on his cock.

He didn’t teach them this, no — but they’re naturals at it, as they are with everything. And even if he’s just a tool for them to use, a pathway to tread in the pursuit of knowledge, he can’t deny it’s pleasurable to be a tool. His breath comes in nearly-silent gasps; a boy catches his lips and passes the information he gathers on to the other boys. A girl’s mouth is on his neck, sucking and nipping at him just gentle enough to hurt, and he sees the other girls learning from it.

Eyes gleaming. Half-smiling. And hands everywhere, pinning him to the floor — hands on his wrists, on his thighs, on his chest, on his cock. 

The thought appears, hazy in his mind, that his grandson must surely be amongst these children; if not touching him directly, then experiencing it through the other boys. But which one is he? The lips around his cock, tongue warm and wet and swirling ‘round the sensitive flesh of his head — the lips on his neck, leaving dark circles everywhere they touch — or the lips on his chest, trailing over his nipples, leaving them hard and slick and pink — or the lips on the shell of his ear, the lips kissing gently over his collarbones, the lips on his, stealing his breath?

Or the lips smiling from the back of the group, patiently waiting their turn? 

Not his grandson, Zellaby reminds himself. Not his blood, no matter how he feels. There’s no Zellaby nose hidden in this sea of near-identical features, none of his ruddiness in their silver skin; no Zellaby, he knows, has ever had golden eyes. So he can’t fault himself for that sin, but still — as tall, as broad, as whip-smart as these Children are, still they’re children. 

And still he lets them touch him. Still he lets them learn whatever knowledge they can excise from his skin, his gasps, his pleasure. He sees the hunger in their peculiar eyes and knows it isn’t like the hunger they’re supposed to feel, but he’s powerless to correct them.

He’s there for their education, nothing more. A wooden puzzle-box in the hands of a bright-eyed toddler. A toy to twist and pull, to manipulate, to toss aside (perhaps) when done.

And how can a puzzle-box resist solving? He’s never cared to know.


End file.
